Ruger Mark III Hunter and Bushnell TRS-25

A little over twenty-five years ago I purchased my first rimfire pistol... a Ruger Mark II Government Target Model in stainless steel.  That gun will literally drill holes with target ammunition.  It's seen a lot of competition, bullseye matches, bowling pin shoots, hunting, and plinking over the years.  After tens of thousands of round or rimfire .22s, it still shoots as well as the day we bought it.  It has been joined over the years by a stainless steel Ruger Mark II 22/45, a blued Ruger Mark III 22/45... and more recently by a stainless steel Ruger Mark III Hunter.

The Ruger Mark III Hunter continues the tradition of reliability and accuracy folks have come to expect from this line of rimfire pistols.  It comes with sharp looking checkered wood grips, a fluted barrel, an optics rail, and a HiViz front sight.  Did I mention the fluted barrel?  Very cool.

The HiViz front sight, when combined with the rear v-notch sight make for quick target acquisition and the HiViz is very bright, even on a cloudy day.  While my gals liked the HiViz front sights, I found the "circle of light" a bit large for my personal tastes appearing to be about a five to seven MOA size to me.  The Ruger Single-Ten I recently bought for my main gal has Williams Firesights which have a much smaller diameter optic rod which I find allows for a little better precision work for me.  As is my typical mode of operation, I did a Loctite job with medium strength thread-locker on the front and rear sight screws once I was sure everything was well sighted in.

While I've not been a fan of optics or red dot sights for Every Day Carry (EDC) guns... competition and hunting handguns are a whole different story.  Cabela's had the Bushnell TRS-25 Red Dot sights for just seventy-nine bucks, so a little Loctite on the screw threads and I mounted the included Ruger optics rail on the Mark III Hunter and then mounted up the TRS-25.

The Bushnell TRS-25 is compact, light-weight, waterproof, has eleven brightness settings and runs off a pretty standard CR2032 battery.  The red dot is small enough to allow for precision work although the "roundness" of the little red dot is not as perfect as our Aimpoint PRO optics... but then again, it's under a hundred bucks.  The gals and I found the TRS-25 to be a terrific optic, with the additional weight hardly being noticeable on the gun.

We've put a couple of thousand rounds through this pistol and optic set-up on sunny days, colder days, and even rainy days.  Typical Ruger reliability is expected and par for the course and as you can see... resting off a plastic barrel on the range... with a crisp breaking, easy trigger-pull... ten CCI Mini-Mag, thirty-six grain, hollow-point .22LRs make for a tight group at twenty-five yards out back on the range.  We've even had tighter groups with various target ammunition, but hey... this gun is the Hunter model so hollow-point accuracy and precision is what counts.

Some of the best fun the gals and I have has is giving the .22 dueling tree a flip-floppin' beat-down out back on the range and this little Ruger does a great job of that.  In fact, my younger gal gave the ol' man a run for the money just the other day on the dueling tree using this gun.  Like Toby Keith says, "I ain't as good as I once was, but I'm as good once as I ever was."

If you're looking for a terrific, accurate plinking, hunting, or target rig in .22 rimfire... a fun gun that's inexpensive to shoot and makes the squirrels quiver with fear... its hard to beat the precision, looks, accuracy, durability, and reliability of the... Ruger Mark III Hunter and Bushnell TRS-25